Robert English
My Game
I stumbled off the soccer field, my head feeling like I just stepped out of the ring after eight rounds with Ali. Our head coach, whom we called Pitty, an apt shortening of his last name, had the genius idea of using a three-and-a-half-hour practice session focused solely on headers. What a wonderful idea! Thirty-five teenage boys with still-developing brains using their heads to attack a brick flying at their heads at increased velocity. I’m sure the state would’ve had a lovely time investigating the athletic department when all our impact concussion tests came back negative. How many shapes were on the previous screen? Umm, Alaska? Pitty set a low bar of excellence for coaching that all my coaches would struggle to exceed.
In my sophomore year of high school, I was enjoying playing time in both the junior varsity and varsity level. Each game, I gained more confidence in my skills, passing smoother and kicking the ball so much stronger. Then Pitty was forced to resign in disgrace by the school after he received a red card during our JV game that he wasn’t even coaching (the equivalent of Dale Earnhardt Jr. getting slapped with a DUI while playing Mario Kart in his living room). The ref gave the opposing team a final minute penalty kick that made Pitty furious, screaming at the refs from the stands. When the ref tried to collect his information, Pitty gave the name of an assistant coach who didn’t travel with us that day. His farewell speech to us the next week at practice was a hate speech against the refs, who he believed wronged him. Halfway through a soccer season and he held no remorse about leaving the team he had been coaching for years? Were we that bad or was it just a paycheck to him?
Coach Fields, our assistant, took over head coaching duties. Fields was my elementary school PE teacher. On the soccer field I was much more terrified of him, with the gaping hole in his teeth, reprimanding our JV team when we tied. “Garbage! That was a loss to me!” No, it was actually a tie, that’s how numbers work. I’m glad I didn’t learn my multiplication table from Fields.
When we got to Franklin Regional for a game the day after Fields’s first practice as head coach, our school’s assistant athletic director, K. Sands, pulled us aside prior to the game. He told us that he would be taking over duties as the head coach after Fields quit. No one gave us an explanation about why he left so abruptly, but our local newspaper surmised that it had to do with an invasive phone call with the school district’s superintendent, who asked why his freshman nephew on the team wasn’t getting enough playing time. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran it on the front page, our town’s biggest news since Zach and Miri Make a Porno rolled through town to film. For the second time in as many days, a coach left without any remorse. K. Sands, an energetic personality but raised as a football coach, stayed with us the rest of the season, leading us to two section victories. I thought it was hard to compete at the highest level when morale was at an all-time low. It’s interesting that they passed over the head coaching role for our third assistant, Coach Randolph, the man who during one game passed me on the bench, reached at my heart, and screamed “Kali Ma! Kali Ma!” like the priest in Temple of Doom. I wish he would’ve actually taken what was left of my heart that Pitty and Fields drained me of that season.
Finally, the school season ended, and our indoor season began at the Pittsburgh Indoor Sports Arena. Since it was a pay-to-play league, our goalie’s father, Mr. Shapiro, volunteered to act as our head coach. Mr. Shapiro’s greatest weakness as a soccer coach was that he knew nothing about soccer. The only advice he gave: “Play your game.” He would shout it randomly from the bench whenever he wasn’t devising nicknames for everyone on the team. Yet our team of tenth-graders kept winning, everyone leaving the field laughing after almost every game.
One game, I couldn’t get my shot past the opposing keeper. In frustration, I kicked the wall after giving the ball away, immediately apologizing to the ref to avoid getting a yellow card. The next weekend, Mr. Shapiro brought me a printed-out poem about not giving up. The poem talked about how Michael Jordan missed nine thousand shots in his career and Babe Ruth struck out more than he hit homeruns. Mr. Shapiro may have the soccer knowledge of a narcoleptic hedgehog, but I had never felt so cared for as a player, especially from an unpaid coach. Turned out that “playing our game” was just having fun. For the first time that year, I was.
Nine years of playing soccer later, I led my first coaching session as a youth coach for the New York Red Bulls. Early on an autumn Sunday morning, I trekked through the dew-soaked outfield of the baseball fields in Central Park. I set out my brand-new plastic cones and mini goals. Instead of thirty-five teenagers, I had a group of twelve preschoolers. I was so nervous for coaching. How would I fill two hours with games and drills that would be fun for the kids? How would I appease the desires of the parents who signed up their children in the hopes of producing a generational talent that will put them in early retirement? Or maybe that’s just my plan for my future children. I couldn’t eat any breakfast because my stomach twisted and grumbled with the anxiety of wanting to be the best as a coach.
The kids arrived and immediately ran around the field, laughing while they chased each other. I started the session with “Coach Says.” It’s like the classic game “Simon Says,” but with the fun twist that Simon legally changed his name to Coach. “Coach says do jumping jacks. Coach says touch your toes. Coach says whenever you get a red card, make sure you give the name of someone else so that you never have to face up to the consequences of your own actions. Coach says spin in a circle.” With them warmed up, our next activity was Sharks and Minnows.
“OK, so you see those cones over there,” I said, pointing to the bright yellow cones a few feet away. “I want you to dribble your ball there and stop.”
“Like pick it up and bounce it over there?” one boy asked.
“Do I look like Phil Jackson? No, with your feet, you idiot,” is what I did not say. Instead, I borrowed his soccer ball and demonstrated, dribbling it between my feet with ease. The kids attempted the same, dribbling aimlessly, bumping into each other, and running way past the cones.
The next hour consisted of simple games that were basically variations of tag with soccer balls. One boy decided he would have a much more fun time playing with the sand in the baseball infield. A different girl started crying in her mother’s arms because she didn’t want to get chased by the Ice Monster. Another devious child used every opportunity to target my face with his foam soccer ball because it brought him joy. I thought that I wouldn’t have to worry about concussions as a coach, but apparently I was wrong.
At the end of the session, one of the boys’ fathers came up to me and said “I’m taking notes. I’m their assistant coach during the week and the kids have never had that much fun.” I’m not raising the next generation of Kylian Mbappés, but if I got the kids to laugh and smile while also using a soccer ball, then maybe I did a decent job.
As I was picking up the cones to head home to watch the Liverpool game, one of the boys yelled out to me as he walked off the field with his parents.
“Bye Coach Rob!”
About the Author
Robert English is an essayist, film critic, sports enthusiast, mental health advocate, and 2006 Time Person of the Year who currently lives in New York City.